Read Online The Burning Horizon by Erin Hunter - Free Book Online

I’m going to cross the BlackPath and see if I can find her trail on the other side.”
    Yakone opened his jaws to protest, then hesitated. “Be careful,” was all he said.
    Toklo followed Kallik to the edge of the BlackPath, where she crouched, waiting while the glittering firebeasts flashed to and fro. At last there was a lull.
    â€œNow!” Toklo said.
    Kallik plunged forward, her paws pushing her along inmassive leaps until she reached the far side of the BlackPath. Toklo watched her through the racing firebeasts as she nosed among the stones and vegetation at the edge of the hard black surface, his claws digging into the ground with anxiety. She wandered in both directions for many bearlengths, eventually returning to a spot just across from Toklo. She waited for a gap in firebeasts, then bounded back to him.
    â€œWell?” Toklo asked urgently.
    Kallik fixed Toklo with a sorrowful gaze. “Nothing,” she reported. “Lusa didn’t cross here.”
    â€œThen what happened to her?”
    Before Kallik could reply, Toklo heard Yakone calling to them, a note of excitement in his voice. “Kallik! Toklo! Come here!”
    â€œHe’s found her!” Kallik gasped.
    She galloped back into the trees, with Toklo hard on her paws, but when they reached Yakone, standing beside the flattened grass they had found earlier, the white male was alone.
    â€œI managed to pick up Lusa’s scent from here,” Yakone said, while Toklo struggled with crushing disappointment. “Though it’s very faint, it goes this way . . . and look at how the grass stems are pressed down. Then here . . .”
    Yakone led the way back toward the BlackPath and halted to sniff the ground, where Toklo saw the deep grooves of a firebeast’s rolling paws and another tiny tuft of black fur on the spiky leaves of a thistle. “This is where the trail stops,” Yakone finished.
    Toklo stared at the fur, so close to the twin gouge marks inthe soft earth. “Was Lusa taken away by a firebeast ?” he asked hoarsely.
    Kallik and Yakone stared at him in dismay. “It seems like the only way her trail could have gotten so cold, so quickly,” Yakone responded at last. “Look at those tracks. The firebeast stopped, grabbed Lusa, and then went off that way, back to the BlackPath.”
    â€œBut why would it do something like that?” Kallik whimpered. “Lusa knows not to attract the attention of a firebeast.”
    Toklo grunted. “I was taken by a firebeast once, remember? Flat-faces dragged me onto its back.”
    â€œThat’s right,” said Kallik. “We followed its tracks and found you where it had crashed into the river.”
    Yakone blinked. “Wow. Well, if you were able to rescue Toklo then, we must be able to save Lusa now.”
    â€œIt won’t be so easy,” Kallik warned, frowning at the BlackPath. “There are no tracks this time.”
    â€œThat doesn’t mean we can’t try,” Toklo insisted.
    Kallik pressed against Yakone. “We shouldn’t have let Lusa out of our sight on the mule track.”
    â€œWhatever’s happened, whatever we should have done, we’ll get her back,” Toklo growled.
    His words were nearly drowned by the roar of the biggest firebeast Toklo had ever seen. It was so long that he wondered if it might be half firesnake. It charged along the BlackPath, bellowing as it drooled out clouds of choking black smoke. Toklo coughed as the hideous fumes caught in his throat, and he recoiled into the trees with Kallik and Yakone at his side.
    â€œThat looked big enough to swallow Lusa whole!” Kallik exclaimed, staring after the huge beast in dismay.
    â€œFor a firebeast, it was slow,” Yakone said thoughtfully. “But it still ran a lot faster than any bear ever could. If Lusa was taken away by one of those, and it left no tracks, do we have any chance of catching